


They Will Watch the Slow Return

by sharklion



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-24 09:16:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2576168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharklion/pseuds/sharklion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When fusion duelists promise to send him to hell, it takes effort not to laugh.  Can't they see?  He's already there."</p><p>Speculation, assumes the city Shun, Ruri, and Yuto are from is Heartland.  A fic that bridges the gap of time between Zexal and ARC-V.  Primarily ARC-V centric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Will Watch the Slow Return

Shun doesn't have the time to afford nostalgia but sometimes he finds old d-gazers and misses the AR network and school uniforms and wonders what curriculum they'd be learning now.

Instead: their lessons plans include how many hours it's safe to take shelter and sleep without moving on. How many souls stolen he'll stay awake regretting, eaten through with guilt. (The answer to both questions is zero. They are never safe, and sleep is too precious a commodity to lose. Guilt rotted somewhere in the gutters, with all the bodies that could have been his.

That could have been Ruri's.)

So Shun doesn't think about the past, if he can help it. It sits in his gut like acid, venom and power and a gaping hole. 

\---

When fusion duelists promise to send him to hell, it takes effort not to laugh. Can't they see, _he's already there._

\---

Ruri and Yuto are old enough to remember Heartland, but not enough to really miss it. The gulf of two years between them is much vaster than it seems it should be. But the city of their childhood is distant enough, that the poison of nostalgia is one they don't hesitate to fall to on late night watches, chatting softly, "Hey, do you remember...". 

It's because they don't, not really. He's heard enough quiet conversations to know it's different for them. Their Heartland is an ideal of better times, a better place. 

His Heartland is youth and innocence, bombed out and shattered. Here today, gone tomorrow. Gone the day after that, too. Every day after that. 

(Solemn, in the ruins of their house, he promises. Good-bye, Mom, Dad. I'll watch after Ruri, for you.)

But if it gives them hope he won't stop them. He closes his eyes and focuses on his breathing, willing himself to sleep with measured breaths, and the soft voices recede with his consciousness.

Ruri glances over at Shun's prone form and tells Yuto, "I miss him, sometimes. Do you remember my brother, how he used to be?"

Yuto might not remember days of dueling as fun and fights meaning playground squabbles, but he remembers this: once upon a time, Shun used to pull Ruri's hair and hide her cards. Once upon a time, Shun used to be fury and childhood tantrums when he lost at cards, and he and Ruri would hide from his fits and laugh together. But times are, Shun doesn't lose, and his fury is terrifying and cold.

He nods and holds out his hand for Ruri to take, for comfort. "Yeah. It's different now."

Her voice is hard with determination, "He's not my dad, whatever stupid promise he made. I'm gonna make him remember that too, someday. It's not just me that lost our parents, and it's not just me that needs to be protected." She reaches out and clasps Yuto's hand too tightly in her own, in promise. 

She knows this: once upon a time, Shun was happy. Once upon a time, they all were.

She doesn't see the point in hiding from the long-buried past, but what she really cares about is their future.

\---

He dreams.

They take him to a time when he was young, before even fear had settled into all the hollows of his bones and before fear had aged to hatred. The city was newly destroyed then, and the death throes of childhood bled out slow. He'd been lost and confused, not comprehending the loss of the AR network, calling again and again his parents' d-gazers and blamed the cracked plastic of his eyepiece when it didn't work.

If he found a new one, it would be okay. He was almost eight now, he wasn't dumb and he knew how to take care of himself. He knew what was wrong, and how to fix it.

And that was how Tsukumo Yuma found him, digging through the ruins, his knuckles busted open and trying to shift a rock more than half his height, and put his hand on his shoulder. "Need a hand?" he'd asked and not waited, using his other hand to shove aside the debris.

"You— you're Yuma! You're the Duel Champion!" Children don't expect to see their heroes in the flesh, and for the first time it occured to him this could be a bad (good?) dream. He abruptly looked down at his arm and pinched it, confirming reality. It hurt— ow— and he'd looked back up, grinning widely for a moment before it shrank away, the rest of the situation still too strange. "You're really here. . . It's all really happening." His voice was quiet.

"Yeah." The hand on Shun's shoulder squeezed, an anchoring gesture. "Come on, wanna let me help? Tell me what you're looking for, and the Duel Champion is on the case!" Yuma bounced down into a squat, putting his face into Shun's line of sight and smiled. 

It was hard not to believe in that face. Hesitantly, Shun returned it, and put one hand up to the cracked D-Gazer over his eye. "A new one. Mine's not working anymore." 

Without even looking at the remains of the surrounding buildings, Yuma pulled off his own and presented it. "That one's easy! Ta-dah! You can have mine."

"I couldn't—" and then, quickly correcting himself, not wanting to lose his chance, Shun swapped from protesting to asking, "You're sure?"

"Yup!" It wasn't just confidence in Yuma's cheery affirmation. "I can't offer to help and then just leave it be. And my friends are coming in a minute! They'll share." 

He didn't want to lose his chance, so he reached out and Yuma dropped his d-gazer into his outstretched palms. "Thanks."

"No probl—" Yuma's waving off Shun's gratitude was abruptly cut into as another voice called out for him. 

"Yuuu~uma," sang a red-head, coming towards them. Despite all the wreckage, the urgency that should be felt at the danger, he couldn't even be bothered to jog. (Now, Shun registers that he walked through the destroyed streets not like someone who hadn't understood the magnitude of it all, but someone who'd walked hand in hand with havoc and could call ruin an old _friend_. Why on earth had there been someone like that, back then? Before everything had gone wrong?)

Yuma had waved and smiled back, but Shun had taken a step back, hiding as Yuma had returned the greeting, "Vector!"

Shun had thanked him again. He hadn't understood before, really, but seeing someone act so normally had jangled in his head, wrong, wrong, _wrong_. It wasn't all right, now. It really wasn't all right. Ruri was alone, somewhere, and he was meeting the Duel Champion and his friend. "I. . . I have to go." He turned and ran.

"Wait!" Yuma's voice was concerned, and he reached out at Shun's retreating back.

"I need to find my family! My sister! Sorry, again. Thanks! I have to go," he called back over his shoulder. The red-head— Vector— had his hand clamped on Yuma's wrist, to stop him from chasing Shun, and Shun had felt a wave of gratitude. If he stayed too long, it would have been harder to force himself to go face everything. It was scary, he didn't want to. He had to go.

He wasn't looking back as the sounds of a small scuffle came from behind him, and then, as he rounded the corner, he heard Yuma say, "Bring it to them! You can do it!" 

It hadn't been a bad way to close the curtains on his dreams. The last of Heartland's duel champions believed in him, even if he could never be one. Everything was scary, nothing was going to be okay ever again, but he knew the catchphrase and what it meant. No matter what the odds, he'd struggle against them. He had no idea if Yuma heard him from so far away, and as quiet as Shun had been, but he'd said, "Yeah, I will," in private promise. Ruri was counting on him, and Yuma was counting on him. 

(Yuma's D-Gazer hadn't worked either, and it's then that he knew it was no use. If the Duel Champion's wasn't working, _no one's_ were going to. It'd been childish logic, but correct. He'd gone home, to where his parents weren't, and then never gone home again.)

Shun has no real means to count the days, but he thinks he's the age now that Tsukumo Yuma was then. 

\---

Fusion summoners are a fact of life and constant threat, but it's the synchro-summoners that Yuto really despises. Scavengers, he thinks. No real stake in this, but here to loot and leave. 

Really, they're easy pickings, and that's the worst part. Fighting for their lives is one thing, but fighting for the scraps of their city, when there's barely anything left that's worth squabbling over? It's his comrades he cares about, not their _stuff_. But he's never given the chance to explain, to even shout _have it!_ at them, before an ambush, and then it _is_ a battle with their lives on the line.

Well, and even if he did, Shun would never let it go.

It's a lost cause, and he has to deal with the here and now. He's not losing one bit of what he has left, no matter the cost that drags heavy on his dirtied hands.

Ruri comes to relieve his watch and intuitive, asks, "Rough time?"

"No. I won."

She kicks back, leaning casually against the wall, but her eyes already sweeping the area, alert. "Yeah, I know that. You're still here and not a soulless shell, right? But there's more to life than just getting by."

Is there? He smiles, slightly, his mask hiding most of it but his tone is warm. "If you say so."

She kicks him, lightly. "Stupid! Even you know better than that," she sighs, "Go get some rest, dummy-Yuto." 

And he does. Somehow he sleeps easier, when Ruri's on watch. 

\---

Ruri's grown up more than half her life in a city that's more rubble than shelter, as many pitfalls as roads. She is not made of glass, and if she _was_ , she'd put those sharp edges to use in the guts of anyone dumb enough to think she's an easy target. 

But really, she prefers not to. She doesn't believe in giving up, and she's never known anything better but she _believes_. A world that gave her Yuto, steadfast and loyal and more compassionate than he likes, that gave her Shun, protective and willful and damaged far more than he'd ever admit to couldn't be all that bad. It can't be her good luck that landed her with them out of everyone in the world, when it's her luck that landed her in their ruined world. So she thinks of them as a median, a baseline. Their world hasn't rotted all the way through, yet. Things are bad now, but they can be better, someday.

But you can't change the world with just a wish, she knows, and the battlefield is no place for distraction. Her body count is just as high as her brother's, but she won't hide her eyes behind her bloodied hands. Someone needs the build the future, and it's only hers that aren't tied. 

She leaves Yuto a note, and Shun a drawing with a mini version of herself, chirping with a music note, "Don't worry about me! Take care of Yuto for me!" 

Yuto's note is better: she doesn't tell him where she's gone, but she tells him _why_. Shun wouldn't have understood that, and she didn't want him to feel worse than he was going to when he woke to find her gone. 

Really, she would have left without one entirely, but she knew better than to think this was going to go well. But she had to try. Tomorrow wasn't going to fight for itself, _that was the whole point_. If she could end things now, someday no one would have to fight at all.

\---

Shun is the one that digs up the name, LDS. Yuto is the first to find his way to the other world. 

Shun is the same as always, and fights with vengeance in his heart and his sister's name on his lips. But Yuto likes to think that maybe, he's changed just a little. 

When he meets Yuzu, he's sure he has. He sees himself in her, fighting to become stronger, to become a shield for her friends. But when she asks why, he answers not with just words of comrades. He tells her he's fighting for a better future, where no one will have to fight, and knows it's true.

There's no way he could lie to Ruri's face.

**Author's Note:**

> Written to Simon Courage Flees the Coop by Kay Kay and his Weathered Underground, which is where the title is taken from.
> 
> Ruri's character, is of course, entirely speculation. However, with Shun grounded firmly in the past, and Yuto's concern being the very present danger to his comrades, it made sense to situate the crux of her character on the future. Other parts of her character were taken from Yuzu, and some parts are entirely from my own taste and guesswork.
> 
> Yuma is in Shun's dream/flashback as a firm symbol of the end of the Zexal era. He's very much associated with hope, and moving him out of the picture makes it clear that the hopes and dreams child!Shun had have also been moved out of the picture. As for why Vector, there was no one else in the Zexal cast that I could imagine making Yuma leave an eight year old alone in a post-apocalyptic city. Originally he was supposed to have more dialogue, but then he stole the scene, so I cut it short. He and Yuma still had their fragment of the fic run a little longer than I intended.


End file.
